Blog Post #4

Asking questions is very important in the learning and teaching process. Teachers have to ask the questions like "What questions am I going to ask my students?", "How am I going to teach this concept?", "How am I going to get my students involved and interested in this concept?" and so on. The students ask questions like "How does this apply to my life?", "How do I do this?", and so on. They also say "This is confusing," "I'm bored," and "I don't understand this." It's the teacher's job to make the "boring" topics interesting. To do this, teacher's need to come up with good questions that make the students talk about it and become interested in it. The articles "Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom", "The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Class", and "Asking Questions to Improve Learning" explain different ways to engage students by using questions.

In "Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom", Dr. Weimer suggests to prepare questions for students when teachers are writing their lesson plans. This way, the teacher won't ask questions that don't make sense and leave the students more confused than they were before. This way, the teacher will be able to place questions where they will be most effective. Also, the teacher should allow students to play with the questions. For example, ask a question and base an activity around it. This way, it keeps students more interested and engaged in the question. Also, it is a smart idea to save and reuse good questions. Not only should the teacher record his or her good question, but a student's good question as well.

In "The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Class", I learned that the goal of a question is not to have the students answer it simply. If it doesn't allow the students to think more critically about it, then the students are probably not going to be very interested in it. Also, when a teacher calls on a student, then asks a question, the rest of the students tune out and don't think about the question. When a teacher asks a question, let it sit on the students' minds for a while, and then asks a student to answer it, all of the students will think of the answer and allow for more thinking to take place.

In the third article "Asking Questions to Improve Learning", it is important to ask the student to give evidence supporting their answer or an example. It will show the teacher that the student knows the information or the information they don't know. Also, instead of asking one, multi-layered question (which can be confusing), it is better to ask multiple questions that clear up any confusion. It is very important to not overwhelm a class discussion with questions. The teacher needs to wait until one question is answered to its full potential, then move on to the next question. Also, just to change things up for the students, the teacher should mix different levels of questions to really check to see if the students fully comprehend all of the answers.